Friday Funnies

A Friday Hodgepodge

I'm in the mood for some laughs this morning, how about you?

1. It can do many things, but can AI create inspirational posters? My favorite -- at least that holds up best without its background image -- from this collection is:

Glorious is the father who owns his quotes, for he also rejoices over his hut.

You be the judge. (HT: Paul Hsieh)

2. One of the more benevolent communities on the internet is the Bald reddit, which helps folks to "lose your hair, not your head."

People go there to get advice from "the council" on whether it's time to just shave the rest of it off, and may be jokingly told things like You're already bald! or (when they still look good with hair) Hold!

Recently, a guy who was sure it was time asked for confirmation, and his top-of-head shot inspired a Game of Thrones-themed map in reply.

For the record, I'm a hold, but barely, thanks to minoxidil. My wife and I joke about her letting me go bald, if I'll let her her go grey.

3. David Bushell doesn't just complain about bad software, he does something about it, as you will see in "Fine! I'll Build My Own Text Editor!":

Image via Know Your Meme.

"They don't make 'em like Sublime Text anymore" resonated with a lot of folk. Software these days is garbage. That got me thinking; I'm good at building garbage!

Why can't I build my own text editor?

VS Code is built upon Monaco Editor which is a <div> soup hellscape. I was late to the VS Code train because for years my Intel inside™ Mac was too slow. That issue was resolved when I bought Apple silicon. If that's the standard I have a lot of room to make mistakes.

I thank Bushell for the laughs, and for introducing me to an old meme, illustrated above at right, that escaped my attention back in the day.

The advantage of finding memes five-plus years older than your children is that there's a decent chance they don't know about them and you can get a laugh, as I learned the last time we did a family painting class outing.

4. Rob Walling's "How to Detect a Toxic Customer" is a humorous guide to early detection, and includes such signs as:

Warning Sign #3: Multiple Contacts, Often Through Multiple Channels

One of my favorites is to receive 3 emails (one each to our sales, support and info addresses), and a voice mail from the same person within a few minutes.

The request is not time-sensitive, the person just want to make sure someone receives it. And we do receive it ... four times.

I've never really understood this one; either they are really anxious to have their question answered, or they don't believe they are going to hear back. Either way, if you have to send four requests in order to hear back do you really want to buy software from that company?

Interestingly, the post itself shows the author practicing what he preaches, and still making a sale even after refusing to do business with a clueless, entitled person who tried to buy from him.

-- CAV

Live Through the Pain

Editor's Note: There is a small but nonzero possibility that weather associated with the hurricane brewing in the Gulf of Mexico will cause me to miss a post tomorrow or be offline for a day or so.

***

Someone responded to a Dear Prudence column with advice for dealing with chronic pain that struck me as worth keeping in the bank for any kind of similar problem that can't be solved:

Over time, I have come to see my migraines differently. My graduate school mentor, who studied healthy aging, would regularly say something along the lines of "Growing old is a privilege too few people get" when people, usually younger students but also the elderly study participants, would get a bit gloomy about the challenges older folks often face... I have done quite a bit of reading about the kind of head injury I experienced, and what I've learned is this: The vast majority of kids who get hurt as I did die immediately or shortly after. As one of the few who lived, I am one of the lucky ones. My migraines aren't going anywhere, but I have the privilege of being alive. I have an incredible wife, and a smart, funny, sweet, cool-as-could-be young daughter. My job, where I have too few days off to take leave when I get migraines, involves attempting to prevent people from developing chronic or deadly health issues. The price I must pay to have these incredible people and this meaningful life is frequent migraines. I accept that price.

That kind of perspective may not relieve that man's pain, but it puts him in a place of agency, which he otherwise would not occupy. He won that perspective by considering how things might have been different, and focusing on the values in his life.

This account reminds me of the sports saying, Play through the pain, except that it is constructive, rather than a foolish invitation to injury. Perhaps Live through the pain can leverage the familiarity to help one remember this positive alternative, if it is ever needed.

-- CAV

P.S. I would sound a note of caution about Prudence's mention of psychedelics. While they have helped some, they can themselves cause permanent, negative side effects.

An Upcoming Challenge for Secularists on Ethics

[T]hey've never faced the fact that while they've rejected so many other doctrines of their childhood preachers, altruism is the one they've never been willing to let go. -- Ben Bayer

***

While I cannot, off the top of my head, recall exactly where I first learned the above insight, I do recall seeing words to that effect by Ben Bayer and admiring what a great connection he had made.

Bayer elaborates on that connection at length in the upcoming Breaking Free from Faith-Based Morality, which will be published by Ayn Rand University Press in December.

In addition to its preface appearing at New Ideal, the book is available for preorder through Amazon.

Below is the conclusion of a look at America's "culture-wide religious fervor," which emphatically includes the secular part of the left:

I love the cover! (Image from Ayn Rand University Press, via New Ideal.)

Each of the other [left-wing] activist movements demands similar Abrahamic submission. Whether we are to sacrifice economic prosperity to Gaia's pristine wilderness or economic freedom and property rights to the classless society of the future, the activists demand we surrender ourselves and our values on the altar of the allegedly "higher" end of serving some Other. This moral outlook enjoins the virtue of humble self-sacrifice, and condemns heretics who commit the sin of prideful self-esteem. Even though many of the modern activists think of themselves as secular, they draw these core doctrines from none other than Judeo-Christian religion -- whether they know it or not.

More rational thinkers in the secular camp may agree there is something wrong with the religious fervor that motivates these activists, but concede that there is something noble about their (professed) ends. They may say that the Bible verses quoted by Talarico and Warnock are from a primitive mindset, but they motivate people to uplift the poor (etc.). But how do these thinkers know that their conception of the noble end is noble and not itself a product of that same primitive, religious mindset?

I think secular altruism -- the doctrine that morality consists in selfless service to others -- is in fact such a product, a holdover from Christianity's two-millennia monopoly over our thinking about right and wrong, good and evil. [bold added]

This will come as no surprise to anyone with more than a passing familiarity with Ayn Rand's critiques of altruism. What this book will do, I hope, is both to make it easier for Objectivists to apply that critique to today's cultural particulars and help some of today's secular leftists reach a point of being intellectually ready to consider that critique and thus learn of a much more practical and intellectually fertile way to think about morality.

I'm glad to hear about this book and look forward to reading it over the holidays.

-- CAV

Chris Wright Challenges 'Climate' Orthodoxy

One of the few good things about the current Administration is its pushback against bad energy policy. A recent piece by David Simon at the Washington Examiner focuses on a report by the Department of Energy that challenges "climate change" orthodoxy.

Its foreword is by Chris Wright, the Secretary of Energy, and states in part:

Climate change ... is not the greatest threat facing humanity. That distinction belongs to global energy poverty. As someone who values data, I know that improving the human condition depends on expanding access to reliable, affordable energy. Climate change is a challenge -- not a catastrophe. But misguided policies based on fear rather than facts could truly endanger human well-being.

A regular here is likely to recall that Alex Epstein, author of Fossil Future, helped popularize the term energy poverty. And such a reader may also wonder why the name Chris Wright rings a bell.

I did, and remembered listening to Epstein interviewing him several years ago. The notes for that episode of Power Hour, as the podcast was then called, state in part:

In the past month Chris has done two very cool things.

One is that he has responded to the ESG movement with a report entitled "Bettering Human Lives" that highlights the amazing benefits of the oil and gas industry, and encourages rational thinking about climate.

Chris has also been making a lot of noise with a new "Thank You, North Face" billboard and video campaign.

In our discussion Chris and I cover:

• Why he chose to be an entrepreneur
• The response to his revolutionary ESG report
• The response to his "Thank You, North Face" campaign
• His role working with Mitchell Energy to bring about the shale revolution
• What Chris's activist successes can teach other energy CEOs
• Chris's plans for future activism
• Our common motivations for focusing our careers on energy
• How we think about criticism

The full interview is embedded below.

Chris Wright, proud Oil & Gas CEO

The Examiner piece is worth reading for an update on Wright's work, although the title is bombastic: While it is encouraging to see a government report like this one make rational arguments about a subject long dominated by hysteria, one must keep a broader perspective.

As good as it is to see this, at least compared to what a Democrat administration might produce, it fails to challenge the premises that the government should be weighing in on scientific arguments or that it has any business controlling the economy. This Administration's hostility to freedom of speech and its improper, constant, and corrupt meddling with the economy both severely undercut whatever good this report will accomplish. Furthermore, since there is no plan to dismantle the welfare/regulatory state, everything remains in place for the next leftist administration to reverse any reforms and reinstitute the previous messaging.

As welcome as this report is, it categorically does not "eviscerat[e] climate change hysteria." It offers counter-arguments, which many on the left will dismiss out of hand, if they hear them at all.

Fighting climate catastrophism isn't the government's job and doing do, as an intellectual campaign, is beyond the government's power, anyway. It is wrong to act like the battle is over just because "our guy" is in charge and got a government organ to produce a good report.

This is a battle won, but it is far from the end of the war.

-- CAV

Will: Spare Two GOP Senators

I generally agree with George Will's call for "carnage" for the GOP during the midterm elections, including his exceptions:

If Mike Rogers, former seven-term congressman and chair of the House Intelligence Committee, is not Michigan's next senator, Abdul El-Sayed will be. The Democrat is comfortable in the company of antisemites and Holocaust deniers.

If Sen. Susan Collins loses in Maine, this will be partly because she did something admirable and senatorial. Standing against manufactured hysteria, she voted to confirm Brett M. Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. In 4,192 words spoken on the Senate floor, she examined his extensive judicial record and the sexual assault allegations against him. Demonstrating the complete lack of corroborating evidence, she concluded that the allegations could not meet even the minimal "more likely than not" standard. Read her statement and marvel at its sobriety about the Senate's "advice and consent" duty. This is vanishingly rare among incumbent senators of both parties. [bold added]

These and his hope, obiter dictum for just enough Republicans left to sustain a presidential veto sounds about right to me.

Will's rationale is spot-on:

If Republicans lose not only their House majority, but Senate seats they currently hold in Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Ohio and Texas, they might begin to wonder: Could we be doing something wrong? Such a resort to thinking is necessary to begin restoring legislative checks on the executive. And it is necessary if America is ever again going to have a conservative political party. [bold added]

Or, better than merely conservative, I would add, a pro-liberty party.

-- CAV

Housecat Update

A Friday Hodgepodge

I realized the other day that we've had our two long-haired Siamese cats, Lucinda and Seymour, for a couple of years now. Here's an update...

1. Lucinda, who likes to sit on my desk during writing time, has taken to announcing her arrival by stretching up, propping herself on my chair, and tapping me on the shoulder.

I then pick her up and place her on my lap, so she can hop up to her spot.

2. Seymour loves pets and belly rubs, but tends to roll over onto the ground quickly. That's not great for my back, so I've taught him to climb up to the top of the litter cabinet for a session after I say Pets?

No. This is not Lucinda. So far.

3. Lucinda isn't the pet fiend that Seymour is, but she will ask for a session now and then. It's usually at some optimally awkward point during my evening routine -- which she always follows me around to supervise.

She emits a quiet, gravelly and high-pitched meow that sounds almost pathetic when she wants her pets and back scratches.

4. Seymour is a wonderful cat, but he has some kind of skeletal or neurological deficit that affects his movement. (Our vet has said that pinning it down would be very expensive and that there would be little we could do for him. She added that, "so long as he does 'all the cat things,' he'll be fine.")

Fortunately, Seymour does do "all the cat things," but sometimes a little oddly, as if he has had to teach himself some of them.

He does a few of his own things, too. My favorite is that if he hears something unusual enough that he wants the lay of the land, he'll stand on his hind legs like a meerkat and look around.

-- CAV

Rescuing Clarity From 'Perfect'

Miss Manners fields a question about perfect, the latest word to get beaten to death from over-/misuse as a synonym for okay.

I found the wording of the question unclear, but the situation made sense: The questioner, being in charge of bookings for a client, ended up double-booking because the way many people use perfect could mean book it or okay, thanks in such a context.

I appreciate Miss Manners's commiseration, especially as I, too found amazing and awesome annoying in their heydays, but I have long taken to the practical solution offered by the first commenter:

No matter what waffling around is done on their part, you need to pin them down before the conversation ends: "So you would like to book for Oct. 13 at 9? I'll put you down for that, then." Leave no room for misunderstanding.

I did this myself just a few days ago when I was hiring movers for some heavy objects we need to move up- and downstairs at home.

My contact may have been puzzled by my need to clarify, but I now know I won't be waiting around on the day, wondering what some guy who said perfect on the phone actually meant.

-- CAV